Oftentimes programs running on a computing device desire to communicate with other programs running on that same computing device or on other computing devices. This communication can be carried out by the programs sending messages to one another, the messages carrying the data that the programs desire to communicate to one another. Different programs, or even different portions of the same program, may desire different features to be employed when communicating with another such program or portion. For example, some programs or portions thereof may desire that all messages be encrypted, thereby preventing a third party that may intercept the message from reading the message, while other programs or portions thereof may not be concerned with such privacy. By way of another example, some programs or portions thereof may desire that messages be reliably communicated to their destination (e.g., the messages must be received at their destination), whereas other programs or portions thereof may not be concerned with such reliable communication and may be willing to allow messages to be occasionally dropped.
One way in which programs or portions thereof can communicate with other programs is through a service that is running on the computing device(s) that is (are) running the programs. Such a service receives messages from a program or portion thereof and transmits the message to the desired destination program.
Current services that allow for such communication, however, typically provide a single set of features and make it very difficult, if even possible at all, for a program or portion thereof to change the features being used. For example, it is typically difficult for a program or portion thereof to change whether the service will use encryption with its messages, or to change the type of encryption that is used. In order to provide greater flexibility to and facilitate designing programs that use such messages, it would be beneficial to have a way in which changes to these features used for such communication could be changed.